Participating in the
symposium were 42 senior international lecturers as well as 27
younger researchers from developing countries representing four
continents. The latter also presented their research, but in
poster form. One hundred eighteen years after Koch's discovery of the
tuberculosis bacterium and 80 years after the development of the
BCG vaccine, the tuberculosis pandemic is still out of control.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that about one
third of the world's population is infected with TB. Ten million
die of the disease. The BCG vaccine has a highly variable
protective effect in different countries (0-80 percent). Despite
intensive epidemiological and molecular biological research, the
factors behind this are unknown. The vaccine's protective effect
is lowest in poor countries, where 95 percent of the infected
people are found. It has been established, however, that his
weakened live-bacterium vaccine - the most heavily used vaccine
in the world (300 million doses annually) - has mutated more than
30 of about 2,500 genes from its original form in the early
1950s.

The symposium examined the role of an
adequate T-lymphocyte-mediated immune response in curing and
providing protection against TB. The human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV), which breaks down precisely this immunity, has paved the
way for a new and devastating epidemic of HIV/TB co-infection,
which is spreading very rapidly, especially in sub-Saharan
Africa. This was described by African researchers at the
symposium. Another new threat is the emergency of multi-drug
resistant strains of TB, which has mainly affected southern and
eastern Europe, Russia and the institutionalized, for example
U.S. prisoners. This was described along with various ways of
limiting the development of drug resistance. The development of
new, stable, possibly DNA-based TB vaccines is the hope of
tomorrow, but the researchers involved made it completely clear
that we are still far from achieving this. Hygienic measures and
carefully monitored follow-up and treatment (Directly Observed
Treatment, DOT) of TB cases is cost- and environmentally
effective even today. This strategy is now spreading with WHO
help to many poor countries, as WHO representatives and others
reported.